Friday, October 26, 2007

During the week of October 22-26, participating students and faculty at over 110 colleges and universities throughout America will wear empty holsters on campus, in protest of state laws and school policies that stack the odds in favor of armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else (movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls, etc).

The symbolic point of the Empty Holster Protest is to represent that students, faculty, and guests on college campuses are left defenseless (with nothing but empty holsters) by state laws and school policies that refuse to afford concealed handgun license holders the same rights on college campuses that they are afforded virtually everywhere else.

Spot wondered whether King Banaian would be wearing the lonesome holster. Apparently so:

"People who would otherwise be able to defend themselves are left defenseless when on campus," said Ethan Bratt, a graduate student wearing an empty holster this week on the campus of Seattle Pacific University.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group of college students, parents and citizens who organized after the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, launched the protest.

"You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

I would like to think the market will take care of this; schools willing to treat their students with respect regarding their right to carry a weapon can appeal to those who wish to do so. But campuses have long been hostile to the idea -- particularly the faculty, as I found out some years ago. As Peter Hamm's response indicates, it doesn't occur to the gun-restricter that he's even violating rights. We've seen that up here, according to Wendy Kaminer.

It is remarkable to Spot that such an alienated sociopath could rise to the level of department chair at a public university in Minnesota.

The King has an idea about the market, though. Wouldn't it be nice, boys and girls, if all the knuckle-dragging, drooling troglodytes were concentrated in one place, taught by guys like the King, and then loosed on a Mad Max preserve somewhere upon graduation to just shoot at each other in a competition for food and mates?